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Learn about the history, operation and liberation of Mauthausen, a Nazi concentration camp in Austria with nearly 100 subcamps. Find out how the inmates were forced to work in harsh conditions and how many died at the camp complex.
Learn about the history of the Mauthausen concentration camp, one of the most brutal and deadly camps in Nazi Germany. Find out how prisoners were deported, forced to work, murdered and liberated in this system of several interconnected camps.
- Prisoners in Mauthausen: Overview
- Category III Camp
- Jewish Prisoners
- Women Prisoners
- Operation K
- Sections of The Mauthausen Camp
- Medical Experiments
- Shooting, Hanging, Mistreatment, and Harsh Conditions
During the war, the SS incarcerated more than 10,000 Soviet prisoners of war at Mauthausen, including 3,000 held at the Mauthausen subcamp Gusen. Nationals of virtually every German-occupied country in World War II came through Mauthausen. These included, among those prisoners who were registered: 1. more than 37,000 non-Jewish Poles 2. nearly 23,0...
In January 1941, SS General Reinhard Heydrich, the chief of the Reich Main Office for Security (Reichssicherheitshauptamt; RSHA), designated Mauthausen as a category III concentration camp, in which the SS would incarcerate only those prisoners whom the RSHA deemed to be "severely incriminated, especially previously convicted criminals and asocials...
Before May 1944, the SS incarcerated relatively few Jews at Mauthausen. The total number of Jewish prisoners at Mauthausen between 1938 and the end of February 1944 was around 2,760. Most of them were reported dead by the end of 1943. From March through December 1944, at least 13,826 Jews arrived in Mauthausen, most of them Hungarian and Polish Jew...
The first women registered as prisoners at Mauthausen (as opposed to Ravensbrück, arrived on October 5, 1943. With the arrival of more women in 1944, the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps classified Mauthausen as a women's concentration camp (Frauen-Konzentrationslager) on September 15, 1944. By the end of September 1944, 459 women were in the ma...
In March 1944, the German Armed Forces High Command(OKW) issued a decree (so-called “Bullet Decree” or “Operation K”) mandating the transport of escaped and recaptured prisoners of war, other than British and US prisoners, to Mauthausen to be shot. The decree applied to all recaptured officers and those recaptured non-commissioned officers deemed n...
The main Mauthausen camp (Stammlager) had three principal sections: 1. Camp I, the original protective detention camp 2. Camp II, the camp workshop area, where prisoners were forced to work, and which the SS later converted to prisoner barracks in spring 1944 3. Camp III, built in the spring and summer of 1944 to accommodate the influx of Hungarian...
German doctors subjected Mauthausen prisoners to pseudoscientific medical experiments, including testing levels of testosterone, experimenting with delousing chemicals, medicines for tuberculosis, and nutrition experiments. Camp physician Hermann Richter surgically removed significant organs—e.g., stomach, liver, or kidneys—from living prisoners so...
The SS also killed thousands of prisoners by shooting, hanging, and mistreatment. Tens of thousands more died as a direct result of the harsh living conditions in the camp, succumbing to starvation, exposure, and disease. After the SS Economic-Administration Main Office (SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt; WVHA) assumed control of the Inspectorate ...
Learn about the history and horrors of Mauthausen, one of the worst Nazi camps, where prisoners were forced to work in granite quarries and face brutal SS guards. The article describes the camp's establishment, inmates, commandants, and liberation by American forces in 1945.
- Malloryk
Apr 8, 2024 · Learn about the establishment, operation and legacy of Mauthausen, one of the most notorious camps run by the German regime during World War II. Explore the harsh conditions, resistance efforts and liberation of the camp, as well as the memorial and museum today.
Mauthausen was a camp for slave labour, medical experiments, and mass killings of Jews and other prisoners. It was established in 1938 and operated by the SS until 1945, when it was liberated by American troops.
Learn about the notorious Nazi camp in northern Austria, where prisoners were worked to death in quarries and munitions factories. See the original camp, memorials and visitor centre, and how to get there from Linz.
